Wednesday, November 01, 2006

D.I.G. this...

Sample ballots appeared in The Sentinel-Record today, and by seeing them I am now more than ready to do my personal duty. From the looks of things, I'll be casting a D.I.G. ballot (Democrat, Independent & Green) Nothing like DIGing this GOP out of office! Upon changing my address on my voter registration a couple of weeks ago, I have learned that my new polling place will be "Tower of Strength Ministries". Ugh!....A Pentecostal church!!! Should I wear my HRC button? A rainbow doo-rag? ABearDidTerribleThingsToMe_t-shirt? Will the poll workers/church members set me on fire?

The registrar and I had a good long chuckle when we both reminisced that this church was once upon a time..."The Vapors nightclub slash dinner theatre" ...although I'm sure she was just awaiting my response to the fact that the building was now a bona-fide tongue-speaking, hand-raising, amen-brutha!, full-gospel evangelite worship den before we both mutually agreed how ironic it was for that to happen.

For those of you who are not familiar, The Vapors nightclub was once Hot Springs' place to see and be seen. The likes of Dinah Shore, Rosemary Clooney, Liberace, Phyllis Diller, Tiny Tim, the Smothers Bros., Bing Crosby, Patti Page, Angie Dickinson, Ronald & Nancy Reagan and Tony Bennet all shadowed the thresh-holds back in the day. But once the illegal gaming houses were finally shut down, the big money left and the entertainers had no reason to come back...and the club finally shut its doors for good in the early 1980's after years of struggling to find and keep an audience.

Funny...those globes and ovoid signage still stand...with a different name of course. And when I go inside to vote, I will listen & look for those echoes from the past. Maybe I'll hear a hint of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" while marking my ballot...but I'm not banking on it. All those ghosts are long gone.